Gov. Sam Brownback’s Tax Cuts, Not a Piano Purchase, Are to Blame for Kansas Budget Woes
But now a new scapegoat has come into focus. It’s those public schools and their free-spending ways. Look no further than the Kansas City, Kan., school district, whose school board recently authorized the purchase of a $47,000 grand piano for Sumner Academy of Arts and Sciences.
That just goes to show you, Brownback declared in a news release, that the entire Kansas school funding formula is off-kilter. He’s calling for it to be thrown out and replaced with something that gives schools less money.
“Recent media coverage of the purchase of a $48,000 grand piano is symptomatic of the inherent flaws in the current formula,” the governor said. “That money could and should have been used to hire another teacher to reduce class sizes and help improve academic achievement.”
Actually, it couldn’t have. As a long-term investment — and not an unusual one for school districts, by the way — the piano purchase came from the school district’s capital outlay fund. By law, that money cannot be used to hire teachers.
More: Gov. Sam Brownback’s Tax Cuts, Not a Piano Purchase, Are to Blame for Kansas Budget Woes